Looking passed the meetings and the occasional community blog, the question then becomes how would you like to interact with your community? We assume, given the opportunity, that most people would love to voice opinions about what their neighborhood or hometown needs. But what is the best way to do that?

Currently, at Localize, we are building a communication tool founded on texting. Texting is a prevalent yet ubiquitous technology that allows community members to voice their opinion from anywhere. But will they? We pass hundreds if not thousands of signs a day, a small percentage of which catch our eye, an even smaller percentage of which get stored in to memory. So how then will you be inspired to text? Is community involvement enough to get you to stop and text your ideas for a struggling storefront?

If not, why not? What would get you involved?…

Building Localize at Baltimore Startup Weekend

The first time I heard of Startup Weekend was in March of this year, when I was doing research for an article on Los Angeles Startup Weekend’s winning team, Zaarly.

I interviewed CEO Bo Fishback and found his enthusiasm and excitement for Zaarly contagious. At first I thought the hook for that article was going to be about the initial investment the team received from Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore -– I was so wrong.

It soon became very clear the story was bigger than the celebrity involvement and had to do more with the potential and possibility the team found emerging very quickly around their idea.

That interview, coupled with watching a video I came across about Philly’s Startup Weekend, got me hooked. I knew I wanted to be a part of Startup Weekend too. I registered for Baltimore Startup Weekend, committing 54 hours of my life, to something unknown but filled with the same potential and possibility.

Read Marla’s entire post on Women 2.0 here.

Creating Startups in Baltimore, Mark Headd & Tropo

This past weekend, over 125 people descended on the City of Baltimore from as far away as New York City for the chance to jump start a business that could become the next big thing.

The first ever Startup Weekend Baltimore kicked off on Friday April 15th and concluded the evening of April 17th with the announcement of winners. This was an awesome event, showcasing not only the talent and business savvy that is in ready supply in Baltimore, but also the willingness of others looking to start a business to select Baltimore as the place to do it.

You can see a few photos from the event this weekend here.

Tropo is proud to have been back in Baltimore for this event, helping teams with technical questions and in building communication apps to support their ideas. It was interesting to see the numer of ideas that centered around SMS messaging, and a number of attendees commented on how they liked Tropo’s pricing structure for developers (it’s 100% free for development!).

Quite a few teams made use of Tropo including TrakFit (a service for recording information about exercise, nutrition and health) and Localize (a service for real estate owners to poll their communities on new business ideas to inhabit vacant spaces).

Localize went on to win second place overall in the event after the judges heard presentations from all of the teams that participated.

Read the post here.

Startup Weekend Leaves Wake of Entrepreneurship in Baltimore, Amy Dusto

“This is wild! This is awesome! I’m going to cry!”

Nicole Formoso, a landscape architect from Rodgers Forge, has just officially become an entrepreneur. Her team placed second in Baltimore’s first Startup Weekend, winning $1,000 and the option to take six months of free workspace in Canton’s Emerging Technology Center (ETC). They’d only met fifty-four hours ago.

Such was the story for most of the teams. Beginning Friday, April 15th with dinner and idea proposals and ending at about 9 p.m. Sunday, April 17th with real business pitches, the event was held for two days in the ETC and one at the University of Maryland Baltimore Biopark. Read more of Amy’s spot-on recap of the weekend here!

Got an idea for that empty storefront? ‘Localize’ aims to give you a say

If you’ve ever walked by an empty storefront and wished the owners were taking tenant suggestions, Alexa Baggio has just the thing for you — or soon will, she hopes.

She’s leading a team that’s working to launch a start-up called Localize, which will offer a platform to vacant-building owners to let neighbors vote — via text message — on what sort of businesses should move in. (A “propertunity,” as the team calls it.) Last weekend the fledgling company took second place at the Baltimore Startup Weekend.

Read more of Jamie’s article here at the Real Estate Wonk’s blog on the Baltimore Sun’s website.

Baltimore’s Startup Weekend — the winners!, Gus Sentementes, Baltimore Sun

So this weekend, I ran a few errands: I went to the bank, dropped off recycling, cleaned my house, worked, and tried to pay some fatherly attention to my kid.

Sounds like a typical weekend for a lot of folks, right? Well, not for the uber-ambitious people who spent 2 1/2 days of their lives breathing, eating and sleeping the Baltimore Startup Weekend experience. That’s some of them below.

Read Gus’ full post on Baltimore Tech here.

Credit: Linda S. Glisson

It’s easy to get lost in the plethora of startup advice that is coating the internet these days – “be careful”, “ignore the haters”, “don’t launch if you’re not ready”, “launch even if you’re not ready”, etc. So after reading enough Steve Blank books to recite excerpts and tallying up enough cred from our Baltimore Startup Weekend performance, we at Localize are proud to announce the start of our pilot!

We will be working with the wonderful people of the Federal Hill Main Street Association to create campaigns for their community and get the residents involved. For those of you unfamiliar with the area – Federal Hill is a quaint offshoot of downtown Baltimore with a rising population of young professionals, a steady and committed group of young families, an involved creative class  – and an ever increasing storefront vacancy rate.

Baltimore has long been known for it’s loyal and committed residents (Raven’s and Oriole’s fans have to be committed) so we thought it the perfect place to plant the proverbial seed. Federal Hill is oozing with small business potential and is looked after by some pretty fantastic people. So, if you’re in the area, look for us in the neighborhood in Summer 2011!

Many thanks to Barry Werner and Jane Seebold of the Historic Federal Hill Main Street Association for getting on board!